Feels Like Home
by tielan
Summary: They're a long way from Pegasus, but they can still find home in each others' arms.


**NOTES**: written for my friend Amy, to stuff her **fandom_stocking** for Christmas 2009.

**Feels Like Home To Me**

Somewhere beneath the blue of a Utah sky just before they take the exit leading to Zion National Park, John takes the call from General O'Neill. The happy buzz of the phone in the recharger belies the tension in the car.

"This is Sheppard."

Teyla doesn't need to hear O'Neill's side of the conversation to know the news is bad.

Beneath the azure of the sky's arch, the light flattens everything and everyone, and John's expression is bleak through the short conversation before he snaps the phone closed with a sharpness that expresses everything unheard.

"Atlantis is not going back."

She makes it a statement rather than a question, her voice even and calm, even through the rising anger winding itself around her chest.

"It'll be relocated out into the Pacific and used as a planetary defense station." John slams his hand onto the steering wheel. "The IOA are bleating that we need every advantage we can get."

"And nothing is said of Pegasus and its needs."

He winces at the edge in her tone. "They don't care about Pegasus. It's...collateral damage."

"My people are not collateral damage!"

"I know that!" John's knuckles grip the steering wheel. "That's the IOA's opinion, Teyla, not mine."

Regret is sharp, like a knife, and cuts deep. Teyla did not mean to react so, but the car feels too small for her anger, even with the broad blue sky over their heads and the thick sunlight pouring down over her shoulders.

Perhaps John senses it, because he opens his mouth to speak then closes it. Unexpected diplomacy.

She longs for home - for the cool forests of Athos and the presence of her people rather than the concrete jungles of American cities and their endless busy-ness.

She wants to hold her son in her arms again and smile down at his burbles and murmurs, to press her forehead against Kanaan's and know that here is someone who does not understand her but who can accept her all the same, to see her people's faces by the firelight and know that if they do not comprehend the why of her decisions then she is still Teyla Emmagan, daughter of Tagan, of Athos to them, and always will be.

It is the heart of homesickness; the acknowledgement that you are far from where you belong.

At the next rest stop - a lookout over the deep orange canyons and their vivid cliffside foliage - Teyla climbs out of the car and slams the door, striding through the parking lot to the fenced lookout where tourists mill and take their snapshots of memory for later recollection.

What Teyla thinks she will remember of this moment is not the craggy rocks with their stark shadows, nor the blue audacity of the sky overhead, but the frustration of the knowledge that she and her people - that Pegasus and all their struggles - is deemed unimportant to the IOA, to the SGC, even, perhaps, to the people with whom she has worked all these years.

John comes to stand beside her, his hands shoved deep in his pockets as he rocks back on his heels. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"All of it. Waking the Wraith, trying to fight back, making things worse."

Teyla knows the expected conventions here. An apology should be met with an acceptance of the apology, with forgiveness for the transgression. At this moment, she is not sure she is capable of either. She is not sure there is any absolution for John - whether real or symbolic.

"A lost hope is the greatest tragedy." It is a quotation from the Mazani matri, but it feels apt on her lips.

"I thought we could make it better."

"You thought wrong."

"We were trying!"

Teyla cannot hold back a snort - a very Earth reaction. "Do, or do not; there is no try."

She knows she is taking out her bitterness on John, who is, after all, only a pawn in these decisions. Her friend is not perfect - he has erred in so many different ways that there is no place to begin and no place to end. She could not absolve him of his wrongs, but she could accept who he was even as she retained the hope of who he could have been.

That, too, is lost.

"You will have Atlantis, at least."

"And you think that's--" John falls silent, the savagery of the words said and unsaid lying between them.

Nearby, a small family tumbles out of their vehicle with shouts and yells of excitement parents, two chattering children and an infant still clinging to her mother. The preservation of their way of life does not require Atlantis' presence here where it may make the difference of life and death in Pegasus.

Teyla swallows the lump in her throat and turns away.

John's hand catches her arm, nothing more than a brush of fingers across her skin as she turns. And when she hesitates, his arm encircles her. "Teyla."

They do not often touch for comfort. Physical contact is for sparring and fighting, for assistance when stumbling through terrain, for the mundane actions of passing weapons or utensils or Torran. John does not touch her for comfort.

Yet Teyla can feel the need in his hands, in his touch, the way his arms come around her; careful as though she were fragile. His cheek presses against her bowed head, she can feel his lips in her hair.

"I'm sorry."

They are the only words he has, and Teyla answers them with the only words she has. "So am I."

She is not the only one suffering homesickness.

--

Later, so much later, Teyla wakes to the unfamiliar brush of fingers on her wrist and lets her own close about them before John rolls over and traces his fingers over her bare hip.

For this night, at least, they are neither of them homesick.

- **fin** -


End file.
